Taken the night of my First Lip Sync Victory at Bar Revenge
How did this happen? Let’s go back to the beginning. February 2015. I’d been out of the T-girl closet for about 4 months, and had been regularly going out in Brighton as female. One event had caught my eye - Lip sync for your life at Bar Revenge. At that point I’d not performed in public since school, my social anxiety making the chances of me doing anything, practically nil. Since my gender dysphoria had been diagnosed though, I’d become more confident, which along with the examples of lip syncing I’d seen on TV, motivated me to go down and give it a go. I was sat at the bar when I had my first of many encounters with host Crystal Lubrikunt as she took my name and my first ever song, You Give Love A Bad Name. I’d opted to go with my trans name Ruby Porcelain although I was tempted by an alternate drag name, Rita Bix, but decided I wanted to reflect my trans identity.
A short time later I was called, and a little nervously, did my performance for the watching crowd. I got some good feedback, and most importantly had enjoyed myself. Not surprisingly I didn’t win. That went to an amazing upcoming queen (and future grand champion) called Shae Den Freude. From there I continued to perform regularly at Bar Revenge, and around a month later, after the recommendation of a few fellow performers, I made my debut at Drag Open Mic’ Night at the Marine Tavern. Those were the two venues, along with a number of one-off appearances at other venues, where I worked on my act and established myself as a popular regular.